Attribute Vocabulary

Attributes are a central concept used throughout Istio. You can find a description of what attributes are and what they are used for here.

A given Istio deployment has a fixed vocabulary of attributes that it understands. The specific vocabulary is determined by the set of attribute producers being used in the deployment. The primary attribute producer in Istio is Envoy, although Mixer and services can also introduce attributes.

The table below shows the set of canonical attributes and their respective types. Most Istio deployments will have agents (Envoy or Mixer adapters) that produce these attributes.

Name Type Description Kubernetes Example
source.ip ip_address Client IP address. 10.0.0.117
source.service string The fully qualified name of the service that the client belongs to. redis-master.my-namespace.svc.cluster.local
source.name string The short name part of the source service. redis-master
source.namespace string The namespace part of the source service. my-namespace
source.domain string The domain suffix part of the source service, excluding the name and the namespace. svc.cluster.local
source.uid string Platform-specific unique identifier for the client instance of the source service. kubernetes://redis-master-2353460263-1ecey.my-namespace
source.labels map[string, string] A map of key-value pairs attached to the client instance. version => v1
source.user string The identity of the immediate sender of the request, authenticated by mTLS. service-account-foo
destination.ip ip_address Server IP address. 10.0.0.104
destination.port int64 The recipient port on the server IP address. 8080
destination.service string The fully qualified name of the service that the server belongs to. my-svc.my-namespace.svc.cluster.local
destination.name string The short name part of the destination service. my-svc
destination.namespace string The namespace part of the destination service. my-namespace
destination.domain string The domain suffix part of the destination service, excluding the name and the namespace. svc.cluster.local
destination.uid string Platform-specific unique identifier for the server instance of the destination service. kubernetes://my-svc-234443-5sffe.my-namespace
destination.labels map[string, string] A map of key-value pairs attached to the server instance. version => v2
destination.user string The user running the destination application. service-account
request.headers map[string, string] HTTP request headers. For gRPC, its metadata will be here.
request.id string An ID for the request with statistically low probability of collision.
request.path string The HTTP URL path including query string
request.host string HTTP/1.x host header or HTTP/2 authority header. redis-master:3337
request.method string The HTTP method.
request.reason string The request reason used by auditing systems.
request.referer string The HTTP referer header.
request.scheme string URI Scheme of the request
request.size int64 Size of the request in bytes. For HTTP requests this is equivalent to the Content-Length header.
request.total_size int64 Total size of HTTP request in bytes, including request headers, body and trailers.
request.time timestamp The timestamp when the destination receives the request. This should be equivalent to Firebase “now”.
request.useragent string The HTTP User-Agent header.
response.headers map[string, string] HTTP response headers.
response.size int64 Size of the response body in bytes
response.total_size int64 Total size of HTTP response in bytes, including response headers and body.
response.time timestamp The timestamp when the destination produced the response.
response.duration duration The amount of time the response took to generate.
response.code int64 The response's HTTP status code.
connection.id string An ID for a TCP connection with statistically low probability of collision.
connection.event string Status of a TCP connection, its value is one of “open”, “continue” and “close”.
connection.received.bytes int64 Number of bytes received by a destination service on a connection since the last Report() for a connection.
connection.received.bytes_total int64 Total number of bytes received by a destination service during the lifetime of a connection.
connection.sent.bytes int64 Number of bytes sent by a destination service on a connection since the last Report() for a connection.
connection.sent.bytes_total int64 Total number of bytes sent by a destination service during the lifetime of a connection.
connection.duration duration The total amount of time a connection has been open.
connection.mtls boolean Indicates whether a request is received over a mTLS enabled downstream connection.
context.protocol string Protocol of the request or connection being proxied. tcp
context.time timestamp The timestamp of Mixer operation.
api.service string The public service name. This is different than the in-mesh service identity and reflects the name of the service exposed to the client. my-svc.com
api.version string The API version. v1alpha1
api.operation string Unique string used to identify the operation. The id is unique among all operations described in a specific <service, version>. getPetsById
api.protocol string The protocol type of the API call. Mainly for monitoring/analytics. Note that this is the frontend protocol exposed to the client, not the protocol implemented by the backend service. “http”, “https”, or “grpc”
request.auth.principal string The authenticated principal of the request. This is a string of the issuer (iss) and subject (sub) claims within a JWT concatenated with “/” with a percent-encoded subject value. This attribute may come from the peer or the origin in the Istio authentication policy, depending on the binding rule defined in the Istio authentication policy. accounts.my-svc.com/104958560606
request.auth.audiences string The intended audience(s) for this authentication information. This should reflect the audience (aud) claim within a JWT. [‘my-svc.com’, ‘scopes/read’]
request.auth.presenter string The authorized presenter of the credential. This value should reflect the optional Authorized Presenter (azp) claim within a JWT or the OAuth2 client id. 123456789012.my-svc.com
request.auth.claims map[string, string] all raw string claims from the origin JWT iss: `issuer@foo.com, sub: sub@foo.com, aud: aud1`
request.api_key string The API key used for the request. abcde12345
check.error_code int64 The error code for Mixer Check call. 5
check.error_message string The error message for Mixer Check call. Could not find the resource
check.cache_hit boolean Indicates whether Mixer check call hits local cache.
quota.cache_hit boolean Indicates whether Mixer quota call hits local cache.


Expression Language